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Flooding-fight allies to face off in court on bettering berm

The county wants Swiftmud, to hold off on allowing the berm fix until a study of the entire situation is completed.

By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
Published February 23, 2005

DADE CITY - Once allies in the quest to fix the flooding problems in Trinity, county officials and the Southwest Florida Water Management District now find themselves butting heads.

Over a berm.

The County Commission voted Tuesday to file a legal challenge against Swiftmud, which plans to grant a permit allowing the Thousand Oaks developer to improve a berm between that community and Trinity Oaks.

The county will ask an administrative law judge to bar Swiftmud from granting the permit until a half-million-dollar study is finished on Trinity's drainage woes. Ironically, the study is co-funded by the county and Swiftmud. The report should be ready in July, Assistant County Attorney Barbara Wilhite said.

Any work in the meantime "may exacerbate the flooding and the road failures," Wilhite told commissioners.

The problems have been most pronounced in Thousand Oaks, where the 3-year-old roads in front of $300,000 homes are literally crumbling, thanks to prolonged water exposure. County officials think the developer designed the community on a faulty assumption that the water table was lower than it really is.

Commissioners said they did not want to become adversarial with Swiftmud, but they don't want the drainage problem in Trinity to get worse.

"It's regrettable we're at this position," Hildebrand said. "To throw a monkey wrench in the middle of this when we're halfway through the (study) process) - we have a serious problem out there."

[Last modified February 23, 2005, 00:35:16]